At the Bitcoin MENA conference, Bilal Bin Saqib, CEO of the government-backed Pakistan Crypto Council and chief advisor to Pakistan’s finance minister, delivered a message that framed bitcoin not as a speculative asset, but as a practical solution to structural economic problems facing millions of people in Pakistan.
One of Bin Saqib’s most striking takeaways was how grounded his argument in lived reality. In Pakistan, bitcoin is less about ideology and more about necessity.
Bitcoin as a financial relief
As Bin Saqib put it, for many Pakistanis “bitcoin is not theory, it’s a relief,” a response to problems traditional financial systems have failed to solve for decades.
He pointed first to savings. Pakistan’s currency has lost more than half its value over the past five years, eroding purchasing power for ordinary citizens. In that environment, Bin Saqib argued, people are not looking for explanations of monetary theory. They are looking for protection.
Bitcoin, he said, provides a way to store value outside inflation driven by political decisions, money printing and currency mismanagement. “You don’t need a lecture,” he noted. “You need a hedge.”
Access was the second pillar of his case. Despite Pakistan being home to roughly 240 million people, more than 100 million remain unbanked.
For this population, traditional finance has simply never arrived. Bitcoin, according to Bin Saqib, offers a financial identity without the need for permission, paperwork or intermediaries that may never open the door.
That permissionless access, he argued, is especially powerful for young people encountering true financial ownership for the first time.
The third pillar was cross-border earnings. Pakistan has one of the largest freelance workforces in the world, yet freelancers often struggle to receive international payments quickly, cheaply and transparently.
Bitcoin and blockchain-based payment rails enable Pakistani workers to get paid globally without friction, delays or excessive fees. For many, this has meant a direct connection to the global economy for the first time.
Bin Saqib tied these grassroots use cases to a broader national strategy. Pakistan, he said, is not trying to “chase the future” but to build a new one. With roughly 70% of the population under the age of 30, the country cannot rely on outdated economic models.
Digital assets, and bitcoin in particular, are being viewed as infrastructure rather than speculation—new financial rails for the Global South.
He outlined his mandate since being appointed seven months ago: to transform one of the world’s largest unregulated crypto markets into a compliant, investment-friendly ecosystem.
Pakistan has already moved to establish a virtual asset regulatory framework, issue provisional licenses for exchanges, and develop regulatory sandboxes for mining, tokenization and fintech.
The goal, Bin Saqib said, is to bring activity onshore rather than push it underground, protecting users without suffocating builders.
Bin Saqib’s discussion of energy
Energy played a central role in the discussion. Pakistan paradoxically suffers from both power shortages and massive excess capacity, paying for electricity that goes unused.
Bin Saqib described bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence as tools to convert that “wasted economic oxygen” into productive output.
Every unused megawatt, he argued, could be turned into bitcoin mining or AI compute, effectively transforming stranded energy into digital exports.
In that framework, bitcoin mining becomes less about consumption and more about industrial renewal.
Rather than exporting only commodities or labor, Pakistan could export compute—what Bin Saqib called one of the most valuable resources of the 21st century. He framed this not as a narrow energy policy, but as part of a broader industrial rebirth.
Looking ahead, Bin Saqib predicted that the next wave of bitcoin adoption will not be led by Wall Street, but by emerging markets where economic pain is real and the upside is massive.
